The Peril of Dark and Cold
by TheSummerNightingale
Summary: The Pensieve hadn't been meant for anyone's eyes. Memories of dark and cold hadn't been for Hermione to see, but she did and as a result, she understood the perils of both.


**Written for Magical Objects & Their Uses, Assignment 10 - **_Write about a character dwelling on the past._

* * *

He had dreamt about this day for months. Ever since escape became a real, tangible thing in the form of a hippogriff, ever since the prospect of freedom became more than a howl for revenge, Sirius had dreamt of the day he could finally stand in front of a cauldron with the tip of his wand pointed to his head.

The thought of soothing the torrent of black and cold memories in his mind almost made tears of gratitude well up in his dark revengeful eyes. Black. Cold. He would have considered these weak adjectives up until the day they became his breath, his meals, and his life.

Sirius murmured an enchantment under his breath and began to slowly draw his wand away from his head. A thin sliver of wispy silver followed its path into an ornate cauldron - his parents' Pensieve, which Sirius had unashamedly taken from their bedroom now that he'd found out he was to stay at Grimmauld Place for nothing short of the rest of his life.

It disgusted him that his thoughts were to intermingle with the remnants of his mother's and his father's, but he quickly forgot this detail after the first stream of memories left him. He let the silver strand settle into the swirling water of the old Pensieve and sighed.

Calm. He had experienced black, he had experienced cold, and _this_ weak adjective that he now understood was called calm.

* * *

 **Months Later**

In a way, Fred and George were to blame. Hermione wouldn't have found the Pensieve if the Weasley twins hadn't set her favorite shirt on fire.

"It was an accident-"

"We swear we were aiming for Ginny's!"

"You can have a free handful of our toffees in return-"

But no matter what they said to beg her for forgiveness, Hermione would have none of it. She stormed through the hallways of Grimmauld Place, seething as she clutched the charred scraps of her once purple shirt.

"As if a box filled of toffees could undo this," she scowled.

She stomped around aimlessly until she stumbled across a room far enough from the rest of the house. It was the last room in the dark corridor of the top floor. If she stayed quiet enough, the twins wouldn't be able to find her and sing flamboyant apologies with poorly concealed snorts of amusement.

She settled in a dusty green armchair and set about working on her shirt. It was actually very easy to recolor and stretch out the fabric to put the pieces back together but, Hermione realized as she frowned down at her creation, she probably should have asked Mrs. Weasley to help.

The shirt somewhat resembled its normal state, but Hermione's eye for fashion was not as keen as she'd hoped it would be. The sleeves were a bit uneven, and something about the overall shape made it questionable whether the shirt was made for a human or a dementor.

She stood in frustration and tossed the shirt over the arm of the chair, crossing her arms. Her eyes scanned the old room. It was unsurprisingly dusty; Mrs. Weasley still had them working on the rooms downstairs and on the first floor.

Something in the furthest corner of the room caught her eye.

An ornate cauldron gleamed from its perch atop an oak desk. It was the only item in the room that wasn't covered in a thick layer of dust, and Hermione's eyes widened as she recognized its specific shape and the silver patterns that adorned it.

"A Pensieve?" she murmured curiously. The shirt was forgotten as she stepped over aged trinkets on the floor towards the glittering cauldron.

Her fingers eagerly reached towards the cauldron. The metal was cool to her touch, and Hermione imagined that she could feel the swirling memories pulsating within its confines. She was a bit too short to see into the cauldron with it on top of the desk, so she stood on a nearby stool.

She gasped aloud as she saw its contents, which filled the cauldron to the brim. "This has to be an old Pensieve," she marveled to herself. "The newer types of Pensieves can't hold as many memories as this. Those memories have to be kept in vials."

But it was easy to see that this was not the case with the Pensieve in front of her. She could see every wisp or cloud of silver that represented a different memory, and there were _hundreds_.

This must have been Mr. and Mrs. Black's, she thought as she reverently ran her finger along the edge of the cauldron. Hermione knew that she really shouldn't, but she found herself itching to put her head into the Pensieve and experience years' worth of history.

She glanced over her shoulder. The twins had probably given up on finding her, and she knew for a fact that Ginny and Ron were out with Bill and Charlie playing Quidditch.

Hermione bit her lip as she stared into the Pensieve again. A little peek wouldn't hurt, would it? And how fascinating it would be to experience Mr. Black's everyday life… This was truly an opportunity that she couldn't pass up. Surely her viewing their memories would only be slightly more offensive than her temporarily living in their house?

In the end, the beautiful silver threads of firsthand history were too tempting to resist. _Just a little peek_ , Hermione thought as she closed her eyes and fell into the cauldron.

* * *

Hermione landed on cold, hard concrete. Her feet, clad only in thin socks, recoiled against the ground. She briefly wondered whether she was standing on ice. Wherever she was, it was cold enough that even when she wrapped her arms around herself, she still shivered.

Teeth chattering, she uneasily peered through the darkness that was so _black_ that she wondered if there was even anything behind it. The blackness was almost solid, and when her tentative fingers touched freezing metal just inches away from her face, she shuddered and remained perfectly still. What else lay behind this curtain of darkness?

Her hand inched towards her wand even though she knew she wouldn't need to defend herself. A fit of ragged coughing startled her, and Hermione spun around. Squinting heavily, she could just barely make out a shivering figure.

There was a man in the corner, slumped against the wall and breathing heavily. He coughed a couple more times, and Hermione knew enough to realize that he was sick. She held her breath as she took in his long hair and dirty clothing. His face looked like it was smeared with dirt, and his eyes held a haunted look that she swore that she had seen before...

Her hand flew to her mouth and she stepped backwards, hitting some sort of pole.

"Sirius," Hermione gasped in horror.

Of course,he didn't hear her. But her eyes had adjusted enough to the dark so that she could see his gaunt face and messy hair now. She remembered seeing posters with this very face on them, and she instinctively drew back and tried to soothe her pounding heart.

She thought she understood now, why it was so cold and… _dark_. She tentatively spread her arm out and ran her hand over the poles behind her. These were bars.

They were bars for a prison- specifically, a wizards' prison. She was in Azkaban. This was Sirius's memory, not his parents'. And Hermione was fairly certain that she wanted her little peek to be over.

She turned from Sirius's shivering form and shut her eyes to concentrate on getting out of the memory. Already, the cold felt as if it was seeping into her skin and turning her bones to ice. She couldn't imagine - _didn't_ want to imagine - how cold Sirius was and how long he had been here so far.

Hermione had just begun to feel the upwards pull of the Pensieve when the air in front of her... changed. To say it turned colder was the only way to describe the shift in the icy air, but it was a shift not only in temperature but also in mood and feeling.

"No," she whispered faintly as she opened her eyes.

She screamed.

There were four dementors steadily approaching Sirius's cell, their long black cloaks wrapping around the bars of the entrance.

Because it was a memory, Hermione was thankfully spared from the feeling of lost hope and happiness that she remembered well from her encounter with dementors in third year. But the way Sirius's hard eyes dulled as he slumped backwards, weak, brought tears to her eyes.

"Stop!" She was losing her sense of control now. She sank to her knees at the persistent bite of cold air and begged the dementors that couldn't hear her and wouldn't listen if they could. "Stop! He's innocent, Sirius is innocent!"

As if making fun of her, one dementor leaned halfway into the bars and reached towards Sirius's crumpled form. Its black finger hovered over Sirius's head.

"Don't!" she screamed.

"Didn't… I… tell y-you?" Hermione's head shot up as Sirius, who she thought had fallen unconscious, lifted his head with effort. She watched as he made an attempt to smirk and said croakily, "I'm not… the… damn bastard…you…want…" She could hear his teeth chattering as he used a shaky breath to spit out, "Pettigrew."

Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione could see the dementors extending out their long spidery fingers towards Sirius, but Sirius's head was drooping and he was really losing conscious now… The scene started to turn dark at the edges - the memory was ending - Hermione managed to whisper, "Stop," one more time before the tides of the Pensieve swept her away.

* * *

When she came to, the first thing Hermione noticed was the warmth of the house. Grimmauld Place neither looked nor necessarily was a warm place, but the dark house was the hearth of a fireplace compared to the harsh reality of Azkaban.

She slumped onto the stool and caught her breath, wiping away the tear tracks on her face.

How was it that Sirius had endured those thirteen years in prison with only an intangible feeling to motivate him? Revenge was a powerful idea, but to live in a cell like that with a faint promise, a dreamless hope…

The sound of footsteps at the door made her look up.

"I always knew you were nosy," said Sirius himself. His hands were in his pockets in a carefree gesture, yet something about the tight look on his face made her shrink against the wall.

"I'm - I'm sorry." Her face flushed with embarrassment but her eyes observed every detail of Harry's godfather that she had never bothered to look at before. Had he gotten that scar from the rough walls of the prison? Was that long scratch on his arm from the bars?

"So which one did you see?" he asked, nodding towards the Pensieve. He didn't look at her in the eye; instead, he walked over to the armchair and picked up her mended shirt.

"There were four dementors," she whispered, staring at the floor. Sirius appeared to roll his eyes, and she realized there must be countless memories like that. Her heart jumped out towards him. "It was dark. And… and _cold_."

The corners of Sirius's mouth curved into a smirk, the full smirk that he couldn't completely accomplish back in the cell. "What a different meaning those words have now."

Hermione nodded.

Harry's godfather sank into the chair and sighed, twisting the fabric of the shirt around his finger. After a long moment of silence, he spoke. "I never look into that Pensieve. Ever."

She bit her lip. "How much of those memories are yours?"

"About half of them."

"I'm sorry that happened to you, Sirius," she said softly, pushing herself onto her feet.

He sighed and put his hand to his head. "If you weren't so nosy, you wouldn't have had to see that."

"Sorry," she said again, and coughed. "I'm going to - I'm going to go back down. You'll be okay here?"

He waved her towards the door, still fiddling with the overlarge shirt. She had just exited the room when Sirius called after her. "Hermione?"

She turned. "Yes?"

"Don't tell Harry about this." Sirius stared at the Pensieve and grimaced, as if he was reliving the memories without even being inside. "Don't even mention it, please."

Hermione nodded, because she understood. She wouldn't tell Harry or Ron or anybody, because after all that he had been through, Sirius deserved to have the calm after the storm.

"I understand."

Hermione left the room, and she did not even imagine the relief that Sirius felt at those words that perhaps nobody but Harry's nosy friend could ever say and live up to.

And in the corner of the room, the Pensieve glittered beautifully as if it did not hold thirteen years' worth of Sirius Black's worst memories.


End file.
